1961 Popular Books and Bestsellers

1961 Books & Bestsellers

1961 Fiction Top Ten Books

(according to Publisher’s Weekly)
1. The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone
2. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
3. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
4. Mila 18 by Leon Uris
5. The Carpetbaggers by Harold Robbins
6. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
7. Winnie Ille Pu by A.A. Milne translated by Alexander Lenard (Latin)
8. Daughter of Silence by Morris West
9. The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O’Connor
10. The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck

1961 Non-Fiction Books

1. The New English Bible: The New Testament
2. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer
3. Better Homes and Gardens Sewing Book by the BH&G Editors
4. Casserole Cook Book by the BH&G Editors
5. A Nation of Sheep by William Lederer
6. Better Homes and Gardens Nutrition for Your Family by the BH&G Editors
7. The Making of the President, 1960 by Theodore H. White
8. Calories Don’t Count by Dr. Herman Taller
9. Betty Crocker’s New Picture Cook Book: New Edition by the Betty Crocker Editors
10. Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell

1961 Notable Literature

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
Madness and Civilization by Michel Foucault
The Structure of Science by Ernest Nagel
Who Governs? by Robert Dahl
Asylums by Erving Goffman
Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
Art and Culture by Clement Greenberg
The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul
The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
A Study of History by Arnold J. Toynbee
The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
The City in History by Lewis Mumford
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein

1961 Book of the Month Club Selections

Shadows on the Grass by Isak Dinesen
Fate is the Hunter by Ernest K. Gann
China Court by Rumer Godden
A Burnt-Out Case by Graham Greene
The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone
Citizen of New Salem by Paul Horgan
Science and Government by C.P. Snow
Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin by George F. Kennan
The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O’Connor
The Making of the President, 1960 by Theodore W. White
Inside Europe Today by John Gunther
Kidnap: The Story of the Lindbergh Case by George Waller
Sinclair Lewis: An American Life by Mark Schorer
The Coming Fury by Bruce Catton
The Way of the Lantern by Audrey Erskine Lindop
1961 Nobel Prize in Literature
Most Popular Books of 1961, according to GoodReads
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